A Tale of Fire and Blood

[General Tacticus]

Originally posted by Bossemanden:

quote:

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Apparently, the fact that this was a particularly bad time to bring bad news to the God quickly circulated in all the empire.

An unrelated piece of gossip : His Holiness the personal majordomo of the Magnificent God, was seen at the slave markets at about that time, buying an great number of unskilled slaves, soon after these news reached Teotihuacan.

That majordomo really looks out for his gods needs doesnt he?
I mean if he tried any harder at avoiding loosing his heart, he´d be noticed and loosing it anyway. A fine line to walk on. Currently he´s my favourite character in the story.[/QB]

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Even the God likes him. And is quite aware that finding a suitable replacement would be very difficult. After all, he is very competent, he knows his place, and without him what little order is left in the palace would dissolve. Still, protocol is protocol, and rules are rules, and they can't be ignored. Besides, if he can't manage to keep his heart, then he's not as good as the God hoped, and doesn't deserve to keep his place. Or his heart.

BTW Any more chapters forthcomming?

Well, my AAR as managed to catch up with the action, so I have to play first (and by now hosting takes quite a bit of time), then write... There will be more chapters, but in a few days.

[SurvivalistMerc]

General Tacticus/Tacitus,

I am really enjoying your tale of Mictlan. Thank you for sharing this with the community.

[SurvivalistMerc]

General Tacticus,

Can you give us an update on Mictlan's situation? How fares the majordomo?

[Cthulu13]

Awesome report, do you take requests? Could you do R'lyeh next?

Anyway, very intresting reports.

[General Tacticus]

Sorry, I got a little sidetracked. I promise, I'll update this week-end !

I might take requests when I finish this AAR, but that may be in some time yet. Or perhaps not... I am at a crucial point where I'll convert most of my economy to blood and summons, and depending how well that goes, the time needed to finish the game may be surprisingly short.
Just a teaser : I've got Forge of the Ancients going, and the Hammer of the Forge Lord. That should allow me to make 1 soul contrat a turn, each one bringing 1 devil a turn... I have also found a site with a 40% reduction on Blood spells. And I have Blood 9 researched.
Oh, and my pretender now has 4 in each and every magic path (except holy and unholy of course)
So If I can work in peace for 20 years, I'll have an economy where gold income is irrelevant (I can alchemize gems with my indy alchemist + Alchemist's stone), I'll have a major source of decent, flying, very mobile armies (the devils) led by whatever strike my fancy (arch-devils, ice devils, succubus...). On the other hand, with some heavy handed blood hunt, I'll probably need to expand to maintain my supply of blood slaves

[Coffeedragon]

Originally posted by General Tacticus:

So If I can work in peace for 20 years,...

I am glad this strat works only in SP [because in MP, others wouldn´t let you alone presumably], or the game would be in need of a patch!

Great AAR!

[General Tacticus]

Peace.

Quiet, uneventful, blessed peace.

In his quarters, the majordomo was relaxing, sipping some of the “wine” the Mictlan troops had liberated from Man. Nobody seemed to know how it was made, but it certainly was better than the cactus alcohol that passed for a national beverage in Teotihuacan.

The Most Exalted God, may all his enemies crumble beneath his Paws, was touring the Empire, looking for magic sites. And having great success too, clearly all those elaborate preparations and carefully forged items were paying off (4+ in every magic skill except the priestly ones).
Mictlipoctli, the King of Legends, was North, celebrating his victory over Vanheim and raising a new army.
Quetzalcoatl was South, on Mount Chaining, (40% blood discount), experimenting with ever more powerful rituals with a few of the best priests of the Empire. At Last reports, he had summoned a Fallen Angel, a second Arch-Devil (not as powerful as the first one, but still nothing to sneer at), two Succubus, and his cross-breeding experiments had yielded about 200 assorted foul things, including a basilisk, a chimera, and two big bad things without names. The basilisk and the chimera were put in storage, to use against Ulm (ranged, area-of-effect, armor-negating attacks should work nicely against the tin men).
Many unique artifacts had been forged. The Hammer of the Forge Lord had been given to the Fallen Angel, who was busy forging Soul Contracts. With the Forge of the Ancient spell, those were very cheap, and already 5 devils were joining the armies each turn.
Blood slaves were found in great number. Nobody had a clue what to do with the mounting piles of gems – Nature was already over 300, with income of 25 by turn. The God had vaguely spoken of “higher summons” and “Gift of Reason”, perhaps that would help.
Gold production was still weak, at about 800 gold pieces, half of which went to pay the armies, but gold was rather irrelevant. A particularly obnoxious young priest had been given the task of finding “where all that money went” - the majordomo suspected it went mostly to the priests -, but truth to tell gold was not important.
Research was doing well, 200 spell pages a turn and climbing.
And the Empire was at peace. Well, not technically. Technically, it was still at war with Jotunheim, Man, and probably half a dozen others which it had never met. But apart from the occasional spiteful Arch-Angel from Man (and one Arch-Devil had made short work of the Last one), no battle was happening. The God had left explicit instructions during his journeys : “Pounce on the first one that so much as looks crossly at us”, but so far nobody was looking. Still, better schedule a Horror, or perhaps a Horde from Hell, to answer Man’s provocations, before the God came back. Just to be on the safe side.
And finally there was an opportunity to retrain the palace staff. Experienced servants had become few over the years – but now the new ones were being trained to acceptable standard. The majordomo opened one eye. “More wine !”, he told the slave girl he was personally training at the moment. Yes, they were coming up nicely, although there was still room for improvement. “I shouldn’t have to ask !” he scolded her…

Peace was good.

And it would not Last forever. Now was the time to enjoy it.

“Come here”, he ordered the slave girl…